Book: Against Power Inequalities: a history of the progressive struggle. Henry Tam. URL = kindle “‘Against Power Inequalities’ provides a historical guide to the contest for power redistribution through the centuries, and draws out the underlying obstacles to the development of more inclusive communities.” Description What’s the book about: “From the time of ancient… Continue reading
Date archives "January 2015"
Strategies to defend and reclaim the ‘public good’ from the state
1) People are fighting privatization by refusing to recognise the state as the owner of public services and resources, instead claiming that they belong to the people. 2) Where public services are gone, people are organising themselves, locally and democratically, to provide the services they need. This included the provision of healthcare in the Greek… Continue reading
The historical origins of coinage in the democratic polis, against the aristocratic gift economy
Money is, and always has been, a “creature of the state”, and currency has always been a state token. Precious metal coins merely represent one kind of state token, and their origins can be traced to the specific social upheaval that took place at the end of the 7th century B.C. This is an important,… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: P2P Search as an Alternative to Google
* Article: P2P Search as an Alternative to Google: Recapturing network value through decentralized search. By Tyler Handley. Journal of Peer Production, Issue 3, July 2013 From the Abstract: “This paper examines the intersection between Google’s desire to “database the world’s knowledge” and the many ways in which Google’s approach affects both the nature of… Continue reading
Trust-based vs. Trustless Infrastructures: ID3 vs the Cryptoledger Infrastructures
Excerpted from Amanda B. Johnson: “The ID3 software, called Open Mustard Seed, wouldn’t just contain your name, home address, birthday, government tracking numbers, etc. It would also contain “biometric” and “behavioral” trackers, and all this data would be fused with every online transaction you ever used it for. … ID3 wouldn’t dream of sharing this… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: the r0g_agency
r0g_agency is a Berlin-based collaborative enterprise for open culture and critical transformation initiated in 2012: “r0g_agency is a Berlin-based collaborative enterprise for open culture and critical transformation initiated in 2012 and founded as a non-profit company in September 2013 by Stephen Kovats and Susanne Bellinghausen, along with a small group of open culture specialists active… Continue reading
OIKONOMOS – a documentary about transforming economics education
“This is a film about the growing movement to transform economics education. There is an increased criticism of economics and economists not adequately dealing with our societal issues, as most recently demonstrated by the global financial crisis. Voices are calling for change, and among that chorus there is a strong plea to make economics education… Continue reading
Julia Reda: Correcting Copywrongs
On Monday Jan 12th we featured an article from TorrentFreak by Rick Falkvinge “In Europe, Pirates Are Writing The Copyright Law” in which Falkvinge discusses the success of the Pirate Party movement and in particular the work of MEP Julia Read. Today we feature a comprehensive talk on the state of EU copyright reform by… Continue reading
Food is not a commons: Tiberius Brastaviceanu responds to Jose Luis Vivero Pol
Tibi responds to an earlier interview we published: “Treating food as commons is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion, unless we want to go back to communism. Food is different from water and even more different from air, in terms of its availability. We can get air just by breathing. Water has some… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Urban Farming Guys!
Recently I have been feeling, as so many of us must be, rather overwhelmed with the quantity of terrible news that just keeps pouring out of the media – senseless violence from governments and those opposing them seems to be the order of the day, paranoia on a scale even Philip K. Dick would have… Continue reading
Workshop on Crypto Equity & the Law – Harvard
January 16 – 18 A workshop examining the interplay between blockchain technologies including distributed cryptoledger technology and existing legal infrastructure or regulatory regimes.The workshop will gather a small group of lawyers and entrepreneurs involved in the deployment of distributed cryptoledger-based applications in order to sketch out a techno-legal framework that could resolve the issues that most of these applications… Continue reading
Design for a Living Planet: Settlement, Science, and the Human Future
By Michael W. Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros In this brief, accessible volume, the authors — an urban philosopher and a mathematician-physicist — explain the surprising new findings from the sciences that are beginning to transform environmental design in the modern era. Authors Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros explore fractals, networks, self-organization, dynamical systems and… Continue reading
A review of climate change developments and a call to action
After a introductory and heartfelt call to action, this video gives a very effective overview of what we learned in 2014 about climate change, and how dramatic the situation has become. At the P2P Foundation, we work at this issue by going to the fundamental structures of our society that make climate change and environmental… Continue reading
P2P Agri-food Projectfest (5): the Peliti “Live” Seed Bank in Greece
Excerpted from Jeffrey Andreoni: (via Shareable and Yes magazine) “The “live” seed bank Peliti, which has been raising awareness about endangered varieties of heritage seeds since 1995. Once tiny, now Peliti is an NGO that receives thousands of visitors for its annual seed swap where you can get a mind-boggling number of seed varieties for… Continue reading
Video of the Day: the Postcapitalist Ecoindustrial Calafou Hacker Monastery and Community in Barcelona
“Calafou, postcapitalist ecoindustrial community Building a space for grassroots sustainable technology development near Barcelona Calafou – the Ecoindustrial Postcapitalist Colony – is a settlement of around three dozen people in the Catalonian countryside. Concrete pylons standing 20 meters high hold a highway passing above the wild forest valley, where hall after dilapidated hall of industrial… Continue reading
In Europe, Pirates Are Writing The Copyright Law
By Rick Falkvinge / Source: TorrentFreak Strangely unreported by mainstream media, there is a major revision of the copyright monopoly underway in the European Union. And the person in charge, Julia Reda, is a Pirate Party representative. The tide is turning. For years – nay, for decades – net activists and freedom-of-speech activists have been… Continue reading